Gun-Free Zone = Massacre

The Wall Street Journal does a good job of summing up what went wrong at Virginia Tech, including a quote from Thomas Jefferson which presents the most practical argument that is most in my mind:

The founder of the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, understood the harms resulting from the type of policy created at Virginia Tech. In his "Commonplace Book," Jefferson copied a passage from Cesare Beccaria, the founder of criminology, which was as true on Monday as it always has been:

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."

Massacres only happen in Gun-Free Zones where killers know or suspect their victims will be helpless. Time and time again killers, using clubs, knives, guns, or poison gas, from concentration camps to shopping malls to Scottish kindergartens have proven that people who think themselves protected by others will wait to die---sometimes literally in line---even if they outnumber their assailants 100 t0 1.

Police, on the other hand, have gone all the way to the Supreme Court to get rulings saying they are not responsible for the protection of an individual. This line of argument is not even counting the millions of people killed by their own government--that our Constitution was written to prevent.

As a classical libertarian, I'm amused and horrified that the same people that accuse our present administration of taking away our civil liberties (i.e. Patriot Act) will the next day argue that only the government should have guns (i.e. take away one our most basic civil liberties).

One person did learn the lesson of history on Monday, Holocaust Remembrance Day no less. He was not a student or Baby-Boomer faculty, but a 74 year old Holocaust survivor. He knew that waiting to die with the others was not an option. Unfortunately for the other victims mowed down while the university/government security forces were deciding on the proper response for public safety, his only weapon was his life.